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What are the facts on illicit and licit drug use in Australia? The NDARC data published at the University of New South Wales is close to worthless. It is really difficult to understand why governments fund such a wasteful enterprise. By far the best available picture is the correctly sampled data provided by the Australian [...] Why? Because of what I said earlier and because it causes lung cancer. On the cancer issue: Cannabis increases the risk of lung cancer and may cause 5% of cases of the disease in people aged 55 and under, according to a new study being published later this year. Researchers have found a 5-fold [...] Harm minimization (HM) drug policies focus on reducing the harmful consequences of drug use rather than attempting to directly limit use itself. To the extent that drug users factor in expected harms when they make decisions to use illicit drugs one can reasonably suppose that reducing harms will, in itself, increase use. Thus a larger [...] Commentator Shawn pointed me toward this marvellous interview with Milton Friedman in America’s Drug Forum. Friedman’s argument for the legalisation of all drugs is not an argument I agree with but the source of disagreement is empirical not ideological. Friedman acknowledges that the single adverse effect of legalisation may be to increase demand. I [...] Those who enthusiastically urge the decriminalisation of possessing and growing cannabis – in Australia primarily the Green Party – are engaging in an unethical advocacy. It is just far too risky. The Independent argues that, in the UK, modern forms of cannabis are unambiguously linked to psychosis and to addiction. The evidence in Australia for [...] 7% of 5,000 babies born in a Perth hospital (King Edward Memorial) have chemical dependency problems stemming from maternal illicit substance use. This has prompted the House of Representatives Families Committee to take evidence in WA tomorrow as part of its inquiry into the impact of drugs on families. Chairman Bronwyn Bishop said it [...] I got a buzz from reading the Becker-Posner blog on libertarian-paternalism. Their argument is in part a criticism of C. Sunstein & R. Thaler’s ‘Libertarian Paternalism is Not an Oxymoron’ .Sunstein & Thaler claim it is both possible and legitimate for private and public institutions to affect behaviour while respecting freedom of choice because people’s [...] The United Nations, 2006 World Drug Report is the most comprehensive qualitative and quantitative analysis of the global illicit drug situation. It is a 2-volume report with the first volume analyzing problems and the second providing an impressive global data base.The general message is optimistic. Over recent years humanity has reversed a quarter-century-long rise in [...] Much of the illicit drug consumption data that you read about in the national press is constructed by the University of New South Wales’ group NDARC (National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre). This is the sort of data you see in newspaper headlines about methamphetamines like ‘ice’ or the number of illicit drug users in [...] Today off to the Australian Professional Society on Alcohol and Other Drugs (APSAD) Conference in Cairns from 5-8th November where I am presenting a paper on alcohol policies. This is mainly a medical conference with a small amount of economics thrown in – hence I am very much a consumer of information rather than a [...] The paper by Suren Basov & Svetlana Danilkina, 2006, ‘A theory of boundedly rational addiction’ is the latest output of our drugs project. In my view its a nice piece that relaxes the constraints of the rational addiction model intelligently. Much more to come at this site soon. Warren Bickel and other researchers have argued on the basis of experimental economic studies that drug addicts have higher rates of time preference than others in the community and higher rates of time preference, in particular, for drugs like heroin than for money. Look here. In a conversation (over a bottle of excellent Chalambar [...] The prolonged struggle Svetlana Danilkina and I have had with the Becker-Murphy (BM) rational addiction model took a new turn today. How to account for rehab and ‘cold-turkey’ withdrawal? BM mumble a bit about this but don’t say much. In the limiting case where expenditure on withdrawal costs zero people will never get addicted. [...] My main economic work interest recently has been on drug abuse issues because I have a Large ARC Grant, Harm Minimisation and the Economics of Controlling Illicit Drug Use to do this. This involves studying addiction from the perspective of economics. In conjunction with Professor Peter Bardsley at University of Melbourne I have initiated research [...] |
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